


Unforgettable

by CoffeeQuill



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Amnesia, Force Healing (Star Wars), Hurt/Comfort, ManDadlorian, Memory Loss, Temporary Amnesia, The Force, The Mandalorian (TV) Season 2 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 08:13:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28468077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoffeeQuill/pseuds/CoffeeQuill
Summary: “Couldn’t tell ya,” Peli sighed. “Maybe Nevarro’s got your answers.”Din stared at her with increasing stress. He swallowed and watched the child in her arms, trying to keep calm, even when panic threatened to set in that he was wildly chasing after his memories. He wasn’t sure what he would find on Nevarro, if he thought his covert to be elsewhere, and part of him was afraid to find out.----After the crash into the ice cave, Din wakes up with few memories of where he is or why. It seems the only way he can put the pieces together is if he retraces his steps. (Written for Red Velvet Panda)
Relationships: Din Djarin & Grogu | Baby Yoda
Comments: 41
Kudos: 222
Collections: Covert Discord New Years Fic Exchange





	Unforgettable

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Red Velvet Panda as part of my discord's new years fic exchange. Thrilled that I got someone who's not only a really good friend but also has mentioned MANY times what type of fic they like and made the "what should i write?" really easy. Even if this idea really fought me for the whole month.
> 
> Happy New Years. Starting off with the necessary ManDadlorian.
> 
> [Discord](https://discord.gg/UwZuG6N)  
> [Tumblr](https://coffeequill.tumblr.com/)  
> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/coffee_quill)

He woke up in the freezing cold.

Din’s eyes blinked open and the first thing he felt was a bone-deep chill. His fingers and toes ached. He was stiff all over. His head _pounded_ with a pain that blanked out his waking thoughts and he squeezed his eyes shut against the feeling, trying to push himself up. He heard cracks and felt resistance until his forearms came free, then his helmet, and he lifted his head to look around.

He had crashed.

Through blurred vision, Din looked around at his surroundings. He was sitting in the cockpit, frost covering the control board, and he could hear the quiet stillness of the outside. An even colder feeling began to fill him and he pushed himself to sit straight, reaching for the buttons above. He pressed several, but the ship gave no response. His gut began to twist with dread. He flipped several switches on the control board and watched as the ship gave no response, then a soft sound of distress from behind him—

Din twisted himself around and stared at the… frog woman lying on the floor. Her eyes were shut and she looked to be unconscious, too, at least from what he could see. His vision was too blurry, his head _ached._ “What the…” he whispered beneath his breath, staring at the woman.

Her eyes opened. She blinked a few times before her eyes landed on Din and she made more sounds of distress, beginning to get up. Din pushed himself to stand, a hand drifting down towards his pistol. “Who are y… you?” he demanded.

_Whoa._

A wave of dizziness came over him as the blood rushed through his body. His vision darkened. The pounding was so _intense._ Din squeezed his eyes shut and grabbed onto the chair for balance, but it moved with his weight and suddenly he was tripping over his own feet, crashing against the side of the cockpit. With a strained groan, he collapsed to the floor and didn’t move. The world was spinning. The woman made louder calls.

It all turned black again.

He woke up a second time, now with a dull throbbing in his skull.

Din sucked in a breath and blinked. He was lying on the floor of the cockpit, exactly as he had passed out, and his vision had improved now but he still tried to blink away the blurriness. He pushed himself up, a blanket falling off his shoulders and around his waist, as another rush came over him.

“Dammit,” he whispered beneath his breath.

It took a minute to collect himself before he could force up to his feet, stumbling towards the doorway. The ship was spinning. The frog woman from before was gone now, and for a moment, he wondered if he had hallucinated, beginning to climb down the ladder. 

The ship below was a complete wreck. Din looked around at strewn crates and scattered equipment that had come loose — he frowned, sure he had strapped everything down at one point. Movement caught his eye and his head snapped up to see the frog woman, clutching a tank full of illuminated water and what looked like… floating eggs. As she sat on one of the crates, the tank in her lap, a tiny green… creature sat at her feet.

Was he dreaming?

The woman noticed him and let out an almost lonely call. She had wrapped herself in one of his emergency blankets, another around the… thing at her feet. The thing let out another trill sound, almost like a baby’s coo, and got up to start towards Din. Din stared at them both, heart pounding as he tried in vain to make sense of this dream when the woman stood.

He pulled his blaster in a snap. “Don’t move,” he said, voice cold.

Everything froze like the outside. The woman made a frightened noise before sitting down again and the creature had stopped, too, staring up at him before getting too close with lowered ears. Din looked down at it. It most definitely looked like a child, being tiny with big eyes and big ears, one of its ears twitching up and looking at him with almost confusion.

That was the moment where he noticed his own armor.

Though it was coated with frost, he also looked down at pure beskar. His heart began to pound, keeping him from hyperventilating, keeping himself from _panic._ “What the hell?” he whispered aloud. His armor set was old, in need of new paint, and did not have this much. This set was brand new, complete, and…

It fit perfectly. Made for him.

“Batu?”

The creature came to his feet now. It lifted its arms, looking up at him like it fully expected Din to pick him up. Din looked down at him, his vision still fuzzy, and then stepped over both him and the nearest crate. The creature made a questioning sound but Din turned his attention towards the woman.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

She babbled away in her language, nothing Din had any understanding of. He scowled, keeping his blaster trained on her, and tried to keep his patience. “What the hell happened?” His voice was thick with anger, anyway. “Why is my ship like this?”

Another outburst of speech in a language he couldn’t decipher. She seemed… harmless. He spotted the tiny blaster she carried but if she viewed him as a threat, it should be drawn. She made pathetic whimpers as she clutched the tank of eggs, assumedly her spawn, shivering.

“Abaah!”

Din looked down at the child again, who cooed upon having his attention. He lifted his arms up a second time in a clear request, but Din stepped over him instead, looking towards the door. It was wrenched open. He shivered as the cold seeped in with snow and snowflakes, but as he stepped through, saw that they were at least somewhat sheltered from the surface’s environment. They had crashed in a massive ice cavern.

“Fuck,” he muttered softly.

He stepped back in to grab his box of tools and walked fully outside, boots crunching in the snow. From the ship came the soft wail of what he was sure was the child-like creature but he brushed it aside, focus instead shifting to the state of his ship. The Crest was _wrecked._ He looked it over with a scowl and began to circle around. Sparks flew from beneath the panels that were wrenched out of place, smoke rose from near the guns, and an engine was buried in the snow. Too much of the ship had sunk into the ground, and he wasn’t sure what the damage was where it was hidden.

_What the hell happened?_

The sun was still out above. Din looked up and winced at the light, then pressed down on his helmet as if the pressure would help his headache any. He began through the snow, squeezing his eyes shut, as he tried to find a place to start.

The last thing he could remember, he had just caught the Mythrol. That was the last… _solid_ memory. Some bits and pieces came after, like talking to Karga although he could only recall a few lines of what had been said, not enough to think of what they had been _about._ There were some things, further down the line, that had felt… more conceptual. Thoughts and feelings he couldn’t discern.

“Batu!”

The strange noise drew his attention away from the sparks and he looked towards the side. The green creature was coming towards him and Din stood, letting the sparker drop to his side. “What are you doing out here?” he demanded. “Go back inside.”

The child stopped but if he understood Din, there was no sign of it. He continued coming closer until he reached Din’s leg, grabbing onto his boot. He looked up at him and cooed, eyes big and… sad.

Something must have happened. Din squeezed his eyes shut and willed the pain to dull further, sure that it was scrambling his thoughts. Somehow, he had the feeling that these were two separate passengers; this child did not belong to the frog woman. They were not the same species. Perhaps, she had adopted him, as Mandalorians practiced. But the way he looked at Din…

A scared child would come to their parent. If the two were together, he should be curled up with the woman, seeking warmth and comfort. Instead, he’d ventured out into the snow, looking at Din now the way a kid would look at their parent after a nightmare.

“Batu-ba,” the kid whimpered.

“I’m not your dad,” Din said. “I don’t know where you came from. Let go.”

“Aah!”

The kid only seemed to hold on tighter to his boot. Din sighed and sank down onto his other knee, lifting the sparker again, and returned to trying to weld wires back together. The ship metal was too strong for him to force back into place and weld; it was starting to look like a lost cause.

“Basah.”

“If you’re going to sit here,” Din muttered, “be quiet.”

The child stared up at him. He let out a soft whimper. Din looked back to the ship and continued to weld with a sigh, the cold seeping through his flight suit. His boots were good but his toes had gone numb now. He only got a few minutes of silence before he felt little claws scrabble at his leg as the child began trying to climb up onto his knee.

“Kid, what are you—“

The baby cooed, claws digging in, and he managed to scale Din’s leg to climb up. Din watched him and let out a sigh, trying to turn his attention back to the ship, when the child turned to snuggle against him. He cooed softly, eyes falling shut. He was… comfortable.

There were gaps in his memory. The last several… days? Months? _Years?_ The thought had him increasingly unsettled. He looked down at the baby and the way he sought Din for comfort, the lack of fear most usually showed around him—

After a deep breath, Din set the tool down and looked at the child. He looked back up at Din and cooed. Din frowned, then picked up the kid and held him at arms’ length. The baby giggled, smiling at him, and Din sighed. “What are you?” he whispered.

The baby tilted his head to the side.

“... Are you a foundling?”

Another soft coo came.

Din looked at him for a long moment, his stomach churning.

“At least be quiet,” he muttered, and settled the kid on his leg again. He lifted the tool to begin again, and the child seemed to listen, snuggling in against Din with no further noise.

_“Mandalorian.”_

With one foot inside the ship, Din froze in place. The toolbox fell from his grip, clattering as it hit the snow, and he pulled his blaster in an instant to aim at… a droid. It was a Q9-0 protocol droid, painted dark and bug-like in its design. It was in pieces with exposed wiring that were tied against the ship wall, stored for no reason he could think of, with a thicker wire leading to a… microphone in the frog woman’s hands.

Din kept his gun on the droid, adrenaline overtaking him, as the baby cooed on his hip. He scowled. “What the hell is this?” he demanded.

 _“Please be calm.”_ The droid’s voice filled the hold and Din slowly stepped inside, out of the snow flurries. The woman’s voice croaked as she spoke. _“This may be the only way we can communicate.”_

“What happened here?” Din’s voice was tight. “Who are you, who is _he,_ why…”

 _“You agreed to transport me to Trask so that I could reach my husband.”_ She reached out to place her hand on the tank of eggs. _“These eggs are the last of my life cycle, and our last chance at family. In exchange, my husband would tell you of Mandalorians he has seen on Trask.”_

“Why do I need Mandalorians?”

“ _We could only travel at sub-light, without harming my eggs,”_ the woman continued, seeming to ignore him entirely. _“We were met by a New Republic X-wing patrol. You fled and we crashed here. It seems you were hit hard enough to lose your memory.”_

“No kidding. _Why_ do I need Mandalorians?”

 _“I do not know.”_ She made a sad croak. _“It is unfortunate, but a deal was made. I_ must _get to Trask, and quickly. The tank battery will die soon and my family line with it. Please, Mandalorian.”_

There was no mention of payment. Din looked at her for a long moment, wondering why the hell he would agree to this if he wasn’t getting real monetary payment for it. Travelling at _sub-light?_ It was insane. That would leave them open to manual failure, pirates, blind encounter—

“Where did we come from?” he asked. “What planets did we go to?”

For a moment, the frog woman didn’t speak. Then, _“A new deal. If you get me to Trask, I’ll tell you everything I can. We have not been together long, but I may be able to give you the lead you need.”_

Din stared at her as the child cooed on his hip. For a moment, he wanted to be angry; his memories were gone and she was going to hold hostage what could help him remember. But reluctantly, he would admit that it was smart; it was the only leverage she had over him when his intended reward was no longer appealing.

Why had he been looking for Mandalorians?

“I don’t know that we can get there,” he said. “The ship is a wreck. The hull has lost all its integrity, the wires are—” he sighed and shook his head, eyes squeezing shut against the throbbing. “I don’t know that I _can_ get us out of here.”

 _“Please, Mandalorian. My husband and I have worked too hard for our family to fall short now.”_ The droid’s voice became thicker with emotion. _“You gave your word and that is why we are here. Even if you do not remember it now.”_

Din frowned. Then, he reached down and set the kid on the floor before stepping one foot out into the snow. He began to gather the fallen tools together and placed them back in the box, letting out a huff, and came back in. “... I’ll see what I can do,” he said. “Stay here.”

Maybe he should sleep, he thought. His only rest so far had been forced unconsciousness. But he steeled himself instead — it was looking like sealing off the cockpit could be their only chance out of here. He wanted the information his passenger carried.

He took one step towards the cockpit when he turned. “Who is this?” he asked, tilting his helmet down towards the child in his arm. “Is he yours?”

The woman was about to put the microphone down when she turned and looked at him again. _“He was with you,”_ she said. _“It seemed he was your child.”_

Din stared at her before his gaze dropped to the kid. The baby looked up at him in return, seeming to shiver before pressing close. A little hand began to reach up towards his face, the baby’s eyes falling half-shut in effort, but Din let out a sigh. “... Alright.”

He turned to get to work on the cockpit.

_Tatooine._

He wasn’t entirely sure what the hell he’d been doing on Tatooine. He’d gone there plenty of times to hunt down targets, or meet with other hunters, or gather supplies for the Crest. It was a familiar landscape, only he wasn’t sure now what Tatooine could have to do with his apparent search for Mandalorians.

But as he approached Bay 3-5, following the frog woman’s insistence that this was where they had come from, something began to feel… familiar.

The child creature was planted firmly in his lap as they prepared for another shaky landing, this time getting lucky in that the ship settled on the ground at all without lurching to the side. As the Crest landed, now leaning on its damaged gear at a slanted angle, the baby giggled and squirmed. He looked up at Din with a delighted gaze and Din just sighed, looking down at him.

“At least _one_ of us is happy,” he said. “Recognize this place?”

The kid became quiet as Din climbed out of the seat and out of the ship. His headache had calmed most of the way, and there was no blazing binary sun to shine into his visor when both suns were lowered to set. As the door lowered, the ramp only reaching halfway, he kicked aside a fishing net and started to climb down.

“The hell have you done now!”

Din’s head snapped to the side and he pulled his blaster in the same instant, lifting it to shoot at a trio of pit droids as they came scurrying towards his ship. The droids shrieked and shot back into their shells, landing on the ground as three immobile disks, and the same voice growled in higher-pitched indignation. _“Hey!”_

Din looked towards the side as a small woman in a mechanic’s suit stormed over, scowling at him. “Oh, you’re going to shoot at them now?” she demanded. “You hate droids, then you like them, and now you hate them again? What have you _done_ to this poor girl?”

Din stared at her as she looked at the Crest with abject horror. For a moment, he didn’t speak, until the child cooed and it drew her attention. She let out a sigh. “At least _this_ little one is okay,” she said, and held her arms out. “Give him.”

He obeyed, and the child had no qualms about being given over. “You know me,” he said.

The mechanic was smiling at the baby but his words made it fade away. She looked up at him with furrowed brows and an almost offended expression. “Yes, I know you. You got your passenger there with all the eggs?”

“Yes, barely,” Din said.

“You found your Mandalorians? Apparently trouble, too. This is a _wreck.”_

Din’s hands twitched at his side. “We crashed,” he said.

“Yeah, I can see that.”

“I hit my head. I can’t remember anything in… I don’t know how long.”

That made her freeze. Slowly, she turned again to look at him, and her expression had softened before her eyes darted down to the child. “... I see,” she said. “You… don’t remember me.”

“I don’t remember you,” he agreed. “The woman I was transporting told me this is where we had come from. I didn’t know who she was or who this kid is, I don’t know why I’m looking for Mandalorians. I was… hoping this could at least point me where to go to remember. _And_ fix my ship.”

The mechanic sighed, then nodded. “I was going to get dinner when you showed up,” she said. “Let me do that, and take a look at what you’ve done here. The droids can get started — if you’ll _let_ them — and I’ll tell you everything I know.”

“Sounds… fair,” Din said. He looked over as the droids popped up from their dormant positions, looking towards him almost fearfully. But the mechanic made it sound like he had allowed the droids to work on the Crest before, and admittedly, these didn’t seem like circumstances where he could refuse the help of droids. He needed answers, he needed good repairs.

“Perfect.” She pointed to the kid. “And I’m holding onto him.”

“... Sure.”

The mechanic — Peli Motto, she called herself — surprisingly brought dinner for him as well, and he climbed back into the Crest to swallow it down. Peli herself ate while looking over the exterior of the Crest. “Absolute _wreck,”_ she sighed repeatedly.

As Peli worked, Din quickly worked through the stew she’d brought, helmet in his lap with the typical anxiety of eating near others. His eyes flickered around the cargo hold and all its mess. While he had managed to tie everything down, he wasn’t entirely sure yet what might have been lost in the initial crash, and as he swallowed the last of the stew he began to—

A gleam caught his eye and he looked towards the weapons closet, frowning.

The door was hinged open and inside was…

Hearing Peli snap at a droid outside, he set the bowl down and got up. He walked towards the closet and reached for the door, pulling it open further with a squeal, only to stare down at a set of Mandalorian armor. It was… old, with chipped and faded paint, a helmet and vest and jetpack all lashed together. He knelt down and began to tug it apart, spotting the vambraces, but it was an incomplete set—

Had he killed someone?

_“Mando!”_

Din turned away and got up, swiping his helmet to put on before he came to the door. He climbed back down and his boots hit the sand as he walked towards Peli, the child still securely tucked in her arms. She was still chewing and swallowed it down before looking at him.

“Alright,” she sighed. “Damage is assessed, and I can fix what you’ve done here. The problem is that it’s going to take _days_ — I don’t exactly have good help here. I can’t guarantee you factory quality.”

“As long as it can fly,” Din said.

“Then you should _treat_ it like you want it to fly,” she grumbled beneath her breath. Din didn’t respond. “I’ve already got those three started. Let’s talk.”

Peli had a small office within the bay, a room mostly dedicated to control of the bay and, as it seemed, sleeping. While machinery began to whirl from the droids’ work, drawing Din’s anxious gaze, she shut the door behind them to shut it off. She sank into the chair, child clutched in her arms, and Din settled against the wall.

“Tell me where to start,” she said.

Din watched her. She seemed entirely harmless, he decided. She had _personality,_ but ultimately harmless. He crossed his arms and thought on it.

“How do we know each other?” he asked.

Peli leaned back in her chair. “Let’s see,” she sighed. “You showed up here for repairs… about five, six months ago. Maybe seven, I’d have to look through the bay logs. Busted engine, plenty of carbon scoring like you’d been in a fight. Never actually told me what it was from. But you had this little one, real protective of him even if you’d left him _alone_ in that ship.”

Din looked at the cooing child.

“You left to find bounty work. No idea _what_ you did out there, but the lil’ _hotshot_ hunter you found turned on you. Came back here before you did. Tried a hostage situation, but you killed him.”

It sounded… familiar, like a far away dream he might’ve had as a child. But he couldn’t conjure up the images in his head, the voices, the thoughts. It felt like it had been locked away behind a vault even if he knew it was there.

“You left and came back… a little more than a week ago. Looking for Mandalorians so you could try and find this one’s people.” The baby had turned and snuggled against Peli, his eyes falling shut. “Something about mapping through a network? You were looking for a Mandalorian here on Tatooine.”

Din frowned. “... I have a set of armor on my ship,” he said. “It isn’t mine.”

Peli nodded. “Apparently, he wasn’t a real one,” she said. “Just wearing the armor. I sent you out to Mos Pelgo, a mining settlement, and you came back with that armor and krayt dragon meat.”

_“Krayt dragon?”_

“Yeah. You killed one.”

Din stared at her, then let out a sigh. “Anything else?”

“Well.” She sighed. “That false Mandalorian had been your only lead, but your passenger’s husband apparently had seen Mandalorians on Trask. That was why you agreed to transport her. You wanted to know if they were the Nevarro Mandalorians, and I don’t know if you actually _found_ any while you were there, seems not—”

 _“Nevarro_ Mandalorians?” Din froze. “That’s... _my_ covert. Why would I be…”

He looked down at his armor, then swallowed and looked at the child again. He drew in a shaky breath as panic threatened to well up in him, forced back down by will alone. Something had happened. Something _had_ to have happened. The covert would not be moved from Nevarro, would not be on a place like Trask, otherwise. They had been burrowed in the sewers for years.

“Couldn’t tell ya,” Peli sighed. “Maybe Nevarro’s got your answers.”

Din stared at her with increasing stress. He swallowed and watched the child in her arms, trying to keep calm, even when panic threatened to set in that he was wildly chasing after his memories. He wasn’t sure what he would find on Nevarro, if he thought his covert to be elsewhere, and part of him was afraid to find out. But instead he steeled himself again and stood.

“A few days, you said?” he said. “I can help.”

“Oh, he’ll _help_ this time,” Peli grumbled. “Alright.”

The Crest did require extensive repairs. The rocks of the ice planet had done their work on the Crest’s exterior, and while Peli and her droids worked there, Din began to work the inside. He cleared away as many nets, sea creatures, and rope as he could before dragging in better equipment, namely a blowtorch and proper cabling.

The Crest was also _old,_ he admitted. He wasn’t entirely sure how many years he could force out of her before the cost of upkeep was equal to that of just getting a new ship. But he felt… attached. His finder’s ship had become his own and now his home. While… _yes,_ he’d allowed other members of his tribe to use it when his surface turn ended, he felt a certain separation anxiety that he was not in control.

He pried open panels and looked through wiring, making sure it all functioned as it was. No lights on the fritz, nothing out of place, it was far more physical damage than anything. As he placed everything back, he heard a coo, and looked over at the child sitting on the dashboard.

“Get down,” Din said. “You’ll fall.”

The baby looked back at him, ears perking, but he turned away again. His hand reached out to grasp something and Din frowned. As he began to hear squeaking, he stood and stepped over. “Hey.”

“Aaah—“

The kid pulled off the metal grip of his engine lever and cooed, staring down at the shiny surface. Din sighed and reached down to grab it, “No. Stop. I’ve told you, you can’t—“”

The child looked up at him with sad eyes and Din froze in place. They stared at each other, and Din slowly let go of the ball, the sensation of…

He sank into the chair and they stared at each other, eyes wide, and Din swallowed. The memory was right _there_ and yet he couldn’t reach it, instead trapped with the feeling that he _knew it._ He knew the child liked to play with the ball. He knew that telling him to put it back wasn’t new. It was…

“I know you,” Din said.

The baby tilted his head to the side.

“Kid?”

The kid cooed and smiled. He reached his arms out and Din picked him up, slow and steady, too aware of the utter comfort the child had around him. He didn’t flinch or squirm or stare too hard at Din with nervous eyes the way children looked at a strange adult. Din held him just in front of his chest and looked down, feeling like he was truly missing something important.

“I don’t understand.”

The baby reached a hand up. His face twisted and he whined, reaching both hands harder towards Din’s face. But a shout from Peli and the panicked sputtering of a droid drew Din’s attention and he stood to look from the windows, watching as the droids scattered around a vacuum tube. Din sighed, then looked down at the kid again.

Maybe he was starting to remember.

After three days of nonstop work, the Crest was back to its old state. It had plenty of scars now, places where metal had been welded on and sealed, not the prettiest ship in the world but functional. He found old paint in Peli’s storage to redo the lines and it could almost look somewhat new.

“Well, you can fly now,” she said with a sigh, arms crossed as they looked at the Crest. “Landing gear’s fixed, exterior restored and welded. You won’t need to seal off the cockpit. It’s airtight again.”

“Thank you,” Din said. “I can only pay half now, but I promise I’ll return with the rest.”

Peli looked at him and made a face before she shrugged. “I’ll trust it,” she said. “You’ve been good for it so far.”

Din nodded.

As the twin suns set, casting the sky in a brilliant orange, Din and the child boarded the fixed Crest. Peli took long enough of a goodbye to the baby, who seemed to delight in the attention, before they settled into the cockpit and began to lift off. The child found his way to Din’s lap, planting himself there like he had no other place, and Din looked down before they shot into hyperspace.

His hand came to the child, rubbing his thumb over his shoulder, and the baby made a soft coo before lying back to sleep. Din watched him in silence for several minutes until he turned his attention onto the lights of hyperspace, beginning to stroke his ears absentmindedly. The baby cooed again, turning so Din scratched in a good spot, before relaxing completely.

Din tried to reach for the memories again, and yet came up with nothing.

This was not the Nevarro he knew.

As he circled above, looking for a good spot to land amongst other ships, the changed state of Nevarro felt impossible to slip by unnoticed. Banners and flags fluttered in the wind, adding colors to an otherwise drab town, with more people in the streets than Din had ever seen. With furrowed brows, he guided the ship to the ground, hands moving across the dashboard with familiarity as the baby’s eyes blinked awake.

“How long have I been gone?” he muttered, a sinking feeling beginning in his stomach.

As he gathered up the child in a satchel bag and began to make his way off the ship, a million more thoughts began to run through his head like calculations, each increasingly worse. For Nevarro to be so different, _time_ has passed, and he thought of Peli’s words of _you first came… six months ago._ He thought back to the pain he’d felt whilst waking up in the ice cave and his stomach sunk lower. He seemed to have a foundling now, it seemed his tribe had cause to abandon their former location and move the covert somewhere new that he didn’t know of, but Nevarro looked like it was flourishing so _why—_

As he exited the ship, two people stood by the gate, and it was relief enough to snap him from his spiral of thoughts.

It was Greef Karga and a woman. He let out a breath of relief and walked over. “Karga,” he said, happier to see the man now than he had ever been, and when the man stuck his hand out Din took it with further relief. Whatever had happened, he was still welcome.

“Mando,” Karga said with a grin. But his eyes quickly dropped to the child and his expression lit up. “And you’ve still got him! Oh, let me see—”

Din’s brows furrowed but he lifted up the bag by the strap and let Karga fish the child out, adoration written over his face. “Has Mando been taking care of you?” the magistrate asked in a babyish tone. “Has he been — he says you have!”

Din stared at him, for a second _entirely_ unsure of what to say at the sight in front of him. “... You know him,” he deadpanned.

That seemed to draw pause at Karga’s actions. The woman beside him, with a dropper tattoo, had been regarding him with a familiar smile but it dropped to fade into confusion. The two glanced at each other and Karga turned back towards him.

“... Yes. What do you mean?”

Din hesitated. He glanced at the woman — there was… something. Something familiar, but he couldn’t place it, unsure of where he had seen her before. _Must be recent,_ he thought, recent enough to have been lost from his memories. He cleared his throat. “I crashed on a planet,” he said. “I hit my head. I… lost a lot.”

The two looked at each other with concerned expressions before looking back at him.

“I don’t know who he is,” he said, gesturing to the child. “He was… on the Crest. He was so familiar with me, I thought he… must be a child I’d picked up for some reason. I don’t know why.”

“You don’t remember him?” the woman whispered. “Mando, he’s your kid.”

“I don’t have a kid,” Din said. The words were said faster, more intensely, than he’d intended. He winced at himself, and at the woman’s startled expression. “... I _didn’t_ have a kid. Maybe this one… maybe a foundling. I’m remembering pieces, just nothing concrete.”

“This _is_ a foundling,” Karga said. His voice took on a serious tone that snapped Din’s attention to him. “Formerly, an asset you brought in.”

Din stared at him longer. He felt… almost no reaction, perhaps delayed, to the words. “A child,” he said. “A _asset?”_

Karga and the woman looked at each other with increasing concern. Karga sighed and held the child close at his chest. “Let’s go somewhere to talk,” he said. Din nodded.

To his surprise, they were not led to the common house, where Karga usually held his business. They walked through the streets, filled with not just the usual diversity of species but entirely _normal_ people. It was not people who refused to look at each other, pushed past, jawas selling wares and bounty hunters walking like they owned the place. In fact, he spotted no hunters at all. Travellers, perhaps, but no one with the same swagger or gear.

“What changed?” he asked.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Karga asked.

They rounded a corner into an office. A voice came from within, one that Din felt was… almost familiar. They ventured inside and Din turned to look at the source of the voice, almost stopping in place at the sight of Karga’s Mythrol accountant. The Mythrol looked up and whatever he was saying died on his lips, staring at Din with almost horror.

“Him,” Din said. “I was bringing him in for you.”

The Mythrol stared for a few seconds longer until he began to splutter something. Karga cut him off. “Mando,” he said in a quiet voice. “That was almost a year ago.”

Din whipped around to stare at him. “A year?” he demanded.

“Ten months, give or take,” the woman said, her voice solemn.

Din’s heart began to pound in his chest. He looked at the child in Karga’s arms, who looked back and cooed, and swallowed down his sense of panic. “I can’t have forgotten a year,” he said. But it made sense. “That’s ridiculous.” But it’d happened.

“Sit down,” Karga said in a tone that matched the woman’s. He gestured to the chair in front of his desk, sinking into a seat on the other side. “I’ll tell you what happened.”

“No,” Din said, blood roaring in his ears as his heart raced. He clenched his hands at his sides. “I have to… I have people to check on. I have to go.”

He stepped towards the door when the woman shoved in front of him. She looked at him with serious… concern. He stared at her, then made tight fists at his sides, he _knew_ her face but it was just another far away dream—

“Din,” she whispered. Her voice was quiet and his entire body stiffened, unable to move. _How._ The word didn’t leave his mouth. “Your tribe is gone. You’ve forgotten too much. Let us _explain.”_

Din stared at her. He felt a coldness creep over him, crawling up his spine to grip and pull him. His stomach twisted and he couldn’t _move._ He said nothing, instead closing his eyes to soak in the horror and disbelief—

“Mando,” Karga said. “Please.”

Din felt his stomach twist again, and he was sure he was going to be sick.

He turned and sank into the chair, shoulders slumped, and as they wove the story he only became more numb.

That night, he returned to the Razor Crest to sleep, his apparent son in his arms.

The child was subdued, watching Din above him, and when he cooed it was with a sad expression as though he could somehow understand what Din was feeling. Except he felt _nothing._ The world had become shut out by stone walls around him and Din closed the Crest doors as if he could close out the reality of what he had forgotten.

The baby let out a mewl. He pressed a hand against Din’s cuirass but Din paid him no attention, instead placing him into the small hammock that he’d apparently made for him. He shut the door of the bunk and slowly backed away, hands coming to the clasps of his armor.

He took his time, but it was mechanical. He took off his pauldrons, then cape, followed by his helmet and cuirass. He set it all aside, with care, piled on the floor. He stripped down to just his flight suit and didn’t quite feel like he was… there.

_Beskar in a tunnel._

As he gathered blankets and a spare pillow from storage, he squeezed his eyes shut against the imagery that seemed to assault his brain. Karga and Cara’s description of the piled armor in the sewers had… rung true. As they had described it, he just knew that it was _true,_ that he had seen it, that they were not lying to him.

Angry tears formed in his eyes that he wiped away in an instant, setting his jaw as he swallowed around the lump in his throat, and his hands shook. He climbed up into the cockpit and stepped in, looking at Nevarro’s dark sky before settling the blankets on the floor and placing the pillow. He laid down. He tugged the blankets over him and buried his face in the pillow.

It muffled his shuddering breath and soaked in the tears that fell, his hands coming to grip the edge of the pillow. He thought of the tribe that had never quite felt like _his_ but was still full of his people. Mandalorians who gave him shelter and brotherhood even if he’d always felt like an outsider since finding them. He thought of foundlings with helmets that were too big for small shoulders, laughing and playing in the tunnels with the same hushed secrecy that they were forced to adopt. _Children._ Barely more than babies, he thought bitterly, some not even teenagers.

He’d killed them.

Killed them so he could get a new suit of beskar, and _beskar belongs with Mandalorians_ but beskar should not, _could not_ outweigh the value of a child—

He heard a soft call from below, so quiet he barely heard it, but he tugged the blankets closer over his head. He turned onto his other side, facing the front of the ship, but the sound came again.

And again.

The child’s soft calls.

When the door opened at his back, he almost jumped, heart leaping into a fast pace. But as another coo came, louder and clearer now, he just buried his face into the pillow and took a deep breath through his mouth.

“Go away,” he said.

Soft footsteps approached. The blanket pulled at his back and he heard a soft whimper as small claws tugged, only to get nothing. The footsteps circled him instead and Din barely peeked an eye out to see the child staring down at him, ears lowered.

Was the child allowed to see him without a helmet?

Did it matter?

The baby stared at him longer, head tilting to the side, and Din looked back as his fingers gripped the edge of the pillow. He took deep breaths, face half-buried in the pillow, and neither moved for a long time.

“You can heal?” Din whispered, strained. “Think you can heal whatever’s wrong?”

“Batu?”

Din sighed and turned over, facing the door.

The baby made a sad squeak. He came to Din’s back again, the blanket tugging, before he grabbed on and _pulled._ Din turned to look back as the child began to climb over his shoulder, little huffs coming from the boy, until he tumbled down and landed just in front of Din with a grunt. Din almost pushed onto his elbow, but the kid crawled to him and he settled again.

“Kid…”

The baby perked up. But when Din said nothing more, he let out a coo and pressed up against Din’s chest, ducking down to lay there. He sat, then laid down, face turned in towards Din. He reached out to grasp his shirt and then decided to pull himself higher up until he tucked beneath Din’s chin.

A little hand came up and touched his jaw. Din looked down at him and felt the lump in his throat grow, impossible to swallow around, and tears pricked at his eyes again.

Warmth began to spread from the child’s hand, making its way down to his chest.

Din gasped softly, but the child’s hand didn’t move, settled in place.

The warmth filled his whole body, every inch of him, before it was followed by a cool and soothing sensation. His muscles relaxed, the tension taken out. His chest loosened, his throat eased, and the child’s ears folded down.

In an instant, it all came crashing back.

Din squeezed his eyes shut against the onslaught, gasping and wrenching away from the child’s touch. The baby whimpered, but Din sat up and pressed his palm to his forehead, heart pounding as the information flooded his mind.

The bounty.

The child.

Fleeing the Guild.

Sorgan, Peli, Gideon, Mos Pelgo—

He was sure he was going to throw up.

But the nausea passed. Covered in sweat, he squeezed his eyes shut again and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes before leaning back on them. The baby stared up at him, looking sleepy but worried. As Din looked at him, he let out a soft squeak, questioning and hesitant. He lifted his arms up.

Din reached down and grabbed him, pulling him to his chest. “Hey,” he whispered, and clutched the child just beneath his chin. _“Ad’ika.”_

The baby burst into a happy shriek, jamming his own cheek against Din’s jaw. “Aabaaa!” he cried, claws grasping at Din, squirming to get as close as he could. Din chuckled and curled in, running his hand over the child’s back.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, holding him close. He rested his chin on the kid’s head, eyes shut, and gently rocked forward and back. “Could’a done that sooner, pal.”

The baby let out a happy whine and settled, eyes blinking shut as he snuggled against Din. They settled in place, and Din continued to stroke his ears, his fingers smoothing from head to tip.

His lingering pain eased away, the memories sitting where they belonged.

Eventually, they slept.

**Author's Note:**

> Ad'ika - little one/son/daughter
> 
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